COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTIONBehind its magnificent ruby-red colour, St. Ambroise Raspberry Ale reveals its refreshing charm from the moment you encounter its bouquet and flavour. Made with fresh raspberries and choice sun-ripened hops, it gently engages your tastebuds in a delicious explosion of flavours. Its delicate fruit aromas marry perfectly with the pleasant hop character typical of all St-Ambroise ales. Brewed in Quebec, just once a year, it's a unique summertime treat.

341ml bottle (dated 2011) poured at 6 degrees in a St-Ambroise tasting glass:
Cloudy ruby pour with a nice density, showing off a pinkish finger of foam. Lacing is average and retention is minimal.
The nose is, as you might expect, all about the fruit with strong notes of raspberry jam, cassis and currants. The fruit dominates the mose so you won’t get many malts and/or hoppy features from it. I personnally would’ve liked to spot at least some hops to remind me I’m drinking a beer and not a summer cocktail. Kind of a downer if you ask me.
The taste is on target with lots fruitiness and tartness one would expect eating raspberry. Malts do come through on the tongue and give it an enjoyeable kick. The tartness stays around to give you a sharp bittery finish of raspberry jam.
This ale is a good choice for the ladies on a hot summer day and it does do the job of providing you with an accurate experience of the fruit overall. I wouldn’t pair this one with anything except maybe a salad (with raspberries) or a raspberry dessert.

Really not quite sure what to make of this beer. Also not sure I can top maneliquor’s review of this (about 3-4 down). "Frambozen" made my day for some reason.
Anyhoo....pour is brownish red, or reddish brown, like canned cranberry sauce. Head is virtually nonexistent, ditto retention and lacing. Nose is almost entirely raspberry, but there is a sort of....thing in the background. One minute I want to say rotting apple, the next cooked beets, maybe boiled cabbage, now I feel it’s kind of a fruit roll-up quality (and as most of these things smell different, maybe it’s ALL of them). Taste is nicely tart and, again, raspberries + rotten apple/beet/cabbage/fruit roll-up. The more I drink the more I want to add prune juice to the weird list above. The "hop character" listed in the description is noticeably absent, though the finish is dryish. Carbonation is really high, too, which makes this taste like some weird raspberry spritzer. And despite the claim of "fresh raspberries" in the blurb above, the ingredients list only "red raspberry juice concentrate", which sounds suspiciously different from fresh raspberries. Also, do raspberries come in colours other than red? St-Ambroise is the first company I’ve ever seen that felt compelled to specify the colour of their raspberries, like angry hordes of people were calling them, disapppointed that their beer wasn’t Slush Puppie blue (why the hell is a raspberry-flavoured Slush Puppie blue?) Ok I digress, several times.
Anyway this stuff is kind of shyte, but I’d assume it’s nice on a hot summer day (as it’s a cold night in fall, I’m hypothesizing).

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